In the Driver’s Seat & Recession Update. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

The Obama Administration Wednesday unveiled a new roadmap for meeting or exceeding the nation’s biofuels targets that appears to put agriculture in the driver’s seat. As part of the revised strategy the EPA, led by Administrator Lisa Jackson - activated a rule to implement the long-term renewable fuels standard of 36-billion gallons by 2022 that includes new criteria for both ethanol and biodiesel and the feedstocks used to produce them.

JACKSON: Because now this rule has shown that the corn ethanol lifecycle analysis is better than the 20% required under ISA, new corn ethanol especially that based on natural gas and efficient methods of production can also meet the renewable fuels standard and be part of that 36-billion gallon a year mix. The same is true for soy bio-diesel.

According to Jackson - full implementation of the expanded renewable fuel mandate would put an additional 13-billion dollars a year in farmers’ pockets.

So you thought the recession was bad…well it just got worse. Job losses during the recession may have been underestimated by close to a million jobs. So instead of employers cutting just over 7 million jobs from their payrolls since the economic downturn began in December 2007, it's expected that the Labor Department's new estimate will be a loss of 8 million jobs.

Now here’s today’s Washington Grange Report.

(GRANGE)

That’s today’s Northwest Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.